"All seven days, one makes his sukkah permanent and his
house temporary"

Mishnah
Sukkah 28b

The opening line of the
last mishna in the second chapter of
the tractate of Sukkah instructs us to adjust our definition of
dwelling. For
seven days, and one additional day outside of the Land of Israel, our
homes -
which come in all shapes and sizes - are to be viewed as the more
temporal, and
the simpler structures that we have erected, the more permanent, the
more
established (kavuah).

In the explanation
given by Rashi and other commentaries, we
see that this permanence of the sukkah is not a comment on its physical
construction and durability, no matter how many nails or screws or how
much
rope we use, but rather on the activities that we engage in inside the
sukkah.
All the basic essentials of our home life should take place there and
the
Talmud goes on to list that a person should bring his fine utensils and
linens
into the sukkah; one should eat and drink there, relax there, learn
there. A
couple of pages earlier the Talmud also mentions the requirement to
sleep in
the sukkah. This is all derived from the section in Emor dealing with
the laws
of the festivals, where the Torah commands us to dwell in the sukkah
for seven
days, "Ba'sukkos taishvu shivas yomim," and the rabbis learn out
"Taishvu,
k'ain taduru," that our existence in the sukkah should approximate,
even mirror
the way we live at home the rest of the year. There should be a
permanency, in
attitude and action, to what is admittedly a temporary structure.

Notions such as the
fluctuation or fluidity of permanence
and the temporal should be familiar to all of us. Sukkos follows ever
so
closely the yomim noraim, a period where we find ourselves in a
precarious,
uncertain place. We now celebrate our forgiveness and a new beginning,
but with
the understanding that there really is no permanence in an ultimate
sense, only
protection afforded us by God. There in Emor, the Torah states that the
sukkah
is a reminder for the generations of how God protected the Jewish
people when
they left Egypt, as they made their way from the house of slavery to a
more
permanent homeland of their own (ki vasukkos hoshavti es Bnei Yisrael).
And
what were these sukkos with which God protected his people? One opinion
is that
these were actual sukkos, physical structures. Another, and the more
stressed
opinion, is that the "sukkos" mentioned refers to the seven Clouds of
Glory
(one above and below, four on each side, and one to lead the way) that
protected the people in the desert. According to some, both are true:
God
provided the Jewish people with actual sukkos and then surrounded them
with the
protective clouds.

The physicality of our
own constructed sukkahs clearly
acknowledges the understanding that God provided actual structures for
His
people. But the idea that "ki vasukkus hoshavti" refers to the Clouds
of Glory
is also present when we remember that the permanence and temporal of
the
physical world are easily interchangeable, and only the divine
protection is
constant. The idea becomes clearer in the sukkah as we sit in the shade
of the
schach covering, with a semblance of roof above our heads but still
able to see
the heavens above. We are "b'tzilah d'mehaimanusa, sitting in the
shade of our
faith in God," the term used to refer to these heavenly clouds that
accompanied
the Jewish people in their journey. In
our own journeys we seek that constant of faith in God to ever protect
us in a
world where that which we call temporal and that which we term
permanent sit
right alongside each other, often encroaching on each other. On Sukkos,
that
proximity is
hard to miss. The temporary, now permanent sukkah we have just erected
on the
balcony, in the backyard, or even on the front lawn is very much within
eyesight, and often just feet away from the permanent, now temporary
home we
live in year round. Judah S. Harris is a photographer,
filmmaker, speaker and writer. His work can be seen by
visiting www.judahsharris.com/visit.